Tattered Essence

I have bad news for you if you were planning on attending John Kremer’s Ten Million Eyeballs Event in Houston. It has been canceled. It seems that there was some hurricane-related damage done to the hotel where it was scheduled to take place. So, it has been canceled. But there might be an online event in it’s place soon. Check your email for a message from John Kremer if you were signed up for it.

If you have decided to self publish your book you likely have a lot of questions. One of those questions might be how long should your book be. The answer is, how much do you have to say? You can also take a different approach. Why not check out the competition. Find books like what you want to publish. Then see what they are made up of. Use that as a guide if you are at a loss.

If you are venturing into self-publishing, there are a lot of things that you need to remember. One of those things is Advanced Reading Copies, or ARCs. The key thing to keep in mind is that they go out three to six months BEFORE you plan for the book to hit shelves. And you want to do ARCs because you want pre-pub reviews. Why? Cause no one wants to review already published books. They just don’t. So, be sure to read up on ARCs and do not skip over doing them.

Have you been looking for some info on the Largest Book Distributors? Well, look no further!

Here are the Web addresses for five of the largest U.S. distributors that work with independent publishers.

Publishers Group West - http://www.pgw.com/home/

National Book Network - http://www.nbnbooks.com/

Consortium - http://www.cbsd.com/

Independent Publishers Group - http://www.ipgbook.com/

Atlas Books - http://www.atlasbooks.com/

Be sure to evaluate these companies on your own!

If you are a self-publisher then you will want to make sure and join SPAN, which is the Small Publishers Association of North America.

SPAN is a great resource for small publishers everywhere. Regular membership is only $115 to join for one year and the renewal is only $95.

With your SPAN membership you get a lot of great benefits too. You get discounts on all sorts of things like FedEx shipping rates, Baker & Taylor’s Partner Package and the Amazon.com Advantage Program.

So if you are going to start a publishing company be sure to check out what SPAN can do for you. I found their FedEx shipping discount to be a great money saver back when I was a member.

Join SPAN here.
Benefits you get with SPAN membership here.

As previously discussed, when you are ready to start your publishing company you will need to get some ISBNs. In fact, you will need to have them before you send your books off to the printer.

If you are unsure of where to get your ISBNs then I have a link for you to check out. To see how to go about getting your ISBNs and how much they cost check out How to get an ISBN for your book. And once you have that ISBN you will also need to get a bar code for the back of that book. To see how to get a bar code on that book, have a look at How to get your ISBN bar code.

These are some great resources on getting started with your ISBN.